A former senior admissions officer faces criminal charges for obstructing justice in conjunction with defrauding the Cambridge Rent Control Board.

Keith W. Light--who served last semester as a first-year proctor in Straus Hall--failed to appear at a criminal hearing in Cambridge late last year and last month moved to Palo Alto, California. Light now works for the Stanford Fund, the endowment organ of Stanford University.

The rent board charged Light last April with providing false testimony to the board while under oath, a violation of Section 12c of the Rent Control Act of 1976.

Rent control officials said yesterday that Light tried to trick a board inspector into believing that he and Dr. Daniel S. Harrop lived at 14 Mt. Auburn St., when the residence was in fact used to house the Harvard branch of Sigma Chi, a national fraternity.

Harrop, a Rhode Island psychiatrist and Sigma Chi alum who owned the building until last year, could not be reached for comment for this article. Light, also a Sigma Chi alum, acted as Harrop's agent in buying the property.

The rent board in April found Harrop guilty of illegally evicting two Harvard undergraduates a year after buying the two-bedroom house in order to rent it to Sigma Chi.

Under state law, new owners of rent-controlled units may evict tenants to occupy the residence themselves. But they may not evict tenants simply to rent the residence to other tenants.

Harrop and Light were both charged with lying to the board, but Harrop settled with the city last May. He agreed to make payment to the Cambridge Affordable Housing Trust Fund, according to Patricia A. Cantor, the rent board's general counsel.

"We applied for a criminal complaint against Keith Light as well," Patricia A. Cantor, the rent board's general counsel, said yesterday. "He defaulted, which means he didn't show up for the hearings".

"It's part of the criminal system now," Cantor added.

According to the Middlesex County District Attorney's office, criminal complaints are filed with the Cambridge Police Department. If Light were apprehended for any offense, however slight he would also face the rent board's criminal charges.

Cantor expressed surprise when she learned that Light had moved to California.

"It's obvious now why he defaulted," she said. "He's not in our jurisdiction. There's a good chance if he just stays in California he will avoid enforcement in Massachusetts."

The counsel said that violation of the Massachusetts rent control act is not an extraditable offense.

A Three-Year Battle